Music reviews in plain English.

The Wombats: Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life

Another decent album from The Wombats, who survived being lumped in with the landfill indie mob and morphed into a decent pop band playing upbeat tunes.

It’s more than a decade since the band’s Let’s Dance to Joy Division was a hit, and they’ve managed to keep going despite a lack of hits. We’d guess the band (Dan Haggis on drums, Tord Øverland Knudsen on bass and Matthew Murphy, vocals, guitar) are personable and the media likes them, a guarantee of publicity; they also turn out decent music: not earth shattering but decent enough to please their fans and get some airplay. They’ve sold one million albums, which is not huge but is 999,998 more than us.

This new album is more of the same; we guess fans buy into the whole package of music, live shows and interacting with the band, whose Twitter feed is full of wombat (the animal) facts and fan feedback; “Glad you like it!” they tell one fan who’s pleased with his new band T-shirt.